So much petty drama has clouded the release of Michael Rapaports A Tribe Called Quest documentary. One version of the backstory casts the first-time director as a doofus actor wannabe (arguably best known for his role as Phoebes boyfriend in Friends) who persuades the seminal, but privately splintered, hip-hop crew to participate in a consummate career doc. After two and a half years of the corny B-lister shadowing and interviewing the foursome (in gratingly affected street patois), the final product gets accepted to Sundance and suddenly the groups de facto leader, Q-Tip, reneges his support via Twitter. The actor/director always seemed like an opportunistic jerk-off, so when three-fourths of ATCQ boycott Park City and later whine on MTV about an errant production email they received conspiring, Well fuck them, its not particularly surprising. Everybody knows you dont trust a fanboy poseur.

The wrinkle in this retelling is that Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest is a phenomenal documentary. Making a love letter to his all-time favorite musicians, Rapaport devotes the films first half to deftly curated archival material, golden-age hip-hop perspectives from the likes of DJ Red Alert and Monie Love, and testimony from an impressive constellation of Tribes peers and pupilsfrom the Beastie Boys to Pharrell Williams to ?uestloveon behalf of the Miles Davis of hip-hop, as the Roots Black Thought remembers the bands initial influence. (Black Thought also hilariously calls ATCQs early kente-cloth and dashiki wardrobe some real questionable-type shit.)

The fawning is more deserved celebration than drooling hagiography. Then comes the films second half, which veers into cinema vérité, focusing on the disintegrated ties between boyhood friends Tip, who has evolved into dapper VH1 royalty, and his 20-year collaborator, Phife Dawg, a squeaky-voiced sports nut whos grown to resent how Tips calculated swagger shrinks him into a sidekick. (Its Diana Ross and the Supremes is how Phife casts Tips attitude to the rest of ATCQ. I guess Ali [Shaheed Muhammad]s Mary Wilson and Im Florence Ballard? Get the fuck outta here.) Pitbull-stubborn and type-one diabetic, Phife becomes the movies wounded dark horse, enduring a desperately needed kidney transplant, calling his boyhood buddy a control freak, and venting about their love/hate relationship. At one point during a 2008 Rock the Bells reunion tour, Phife gives Tip the silent treatment so resolutely that an awkward shouting match ensues, with Ali and Tribes spiritual backbone Jarobi White left ducking the crossfire.

Despite the passive-aggressive bickering, Beats, Rhymes & Life is not, thankfully, hip-hops Some Kind of Monster. (At one point, when Phifes wife suggests band therapy, as Metallica underwent in that doc, he rebuffs her with, I know what the problem is, Im not paying for you to tell me nothing!) And instead of editing his subjects into pre-ordained music biz roles, Rapaport uses his access to present the members as full dynamic characters, both letting a subway-stairs climbing scene linger long enough to catch Tip politely let an older lady walk in front of him while also portraying the rapper as a perfectionist headcaseas former Jive Records exec Barry Weiss puts it, I love Q-Tip, but hes a fucking nut. Its easy to see how a control-freak perfectionist would mistake such character assessment for assassination. Its not, and even a fanboy poseur like Michael Rapaport knows that.